[Suggestion] Novel Pricing
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@the-green-death My point from that was that MagaFox was able to pay for its massive server and employees while also able to develop and sell merchandise through the use of ads. That is money. I want to say again that I am not suggesting this site be free and do all kind of illegal translating.
My point is that the costs of their product could be lower if they agree to run ads to make some money
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@sam-pinansky First of all calm down, you can remove me if you like. The reason why I have been writing all this comment is because the price of a light novel volume is simply a lot. No matter how much making it costs if you can not reach an equilibrium price that is not my fault. What I suggested is a suggestion to maybe reduce cost per volume and help both this site and potential readers to enjoy a light novel.
If this somehow came up as offensive then I am sorry but the truth of the matter is. The cost that this website proposes per volume is simply too much for most reader and licensing and stopping a form of entertainment to trade readers of different places to my mind is simply not right. -
Saying cost is to high is based on ones perspective, that should be the end of this conversation.
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@mianli I'm not angry, just providing some facts that counter your suggestion.
Running ads would provide only a very small amount of additional income, not enough to offset the ebook or subscription cost. It would barely cover the cost of production for half a volume a month, and the negative effect of ads on subscriber numbers would surely cause a lot of people to quit.
It would be a terrible business decision. Internet advertising just isn't efficient enough at these scales. If you have any other suggestion for lowering the price, go ahead. -
@mianli said in [Suggestion] Novel Pricing:
The cost that this website proposes per volume is simply too much for most reader and licensing and stopping a form of entertainment to trade readers of different places to my mind is simply not right.
I am just wondering where you got that from? that the cost is higher than most readers.
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@mianli said in [Suggestion] Novel Pricing:
The reason why I have been writing all this comment is because the price of a light novel volume is simply a lot. No matter how much making it costs if you can not reach an equilibrium price that is not my fault.
It's not a lot, it's the same or less than other books.
The cost that this website proposes per volume is simply too much for most reader
Pretty sure you are wrong here, plain and simple. Businesses do not run on hopes and dreams, a lot of thought and research goes into determining price points in order to ensure the company can sell a product and still make enough profit to stay alive, grow, and expand.
Considering that JNC hasn't stagnated on the same half-dozen launch titles but instead has expanded to over 30 titles with a dozen more to be announced over the next 2 months, you should take that to mean that they were successful in their business venture.
I feel for you if you are unable to afford these e-books, but please understand that the business is already working.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros And this is why the price is not too high. as you said JNC was able to bring more LN so going by that instead of having like 3 or 4 LN from JNC we got over 30 now. That is not limiting a form of entertainment but broadening it.
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J-Novel Club already has some of the lowest pricing in the light novel industry, so clearly the prices are not too high. No matter the price point, there will always be somebody who can't afford that price point. With the prices already being lower than most of the competition, I think that any argument that the prices are still too high is misplaced.
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@drone205 Unfortunately for a lot of people they consider $0.01 to be too much to pay for entertainment, expecting new content to perpetually be created from the ether.
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If the argument is that content should be free or near-free regardless of the costs of producing that content, then that argument isn't worth considering... And threats to take business elsewhere have little force when said business does not represent any revenue to the company.
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wow, the argument was never to make it free or near free because that is impossible if it wants to be licensed, The point of this argument is find a compromising point in which readers from areas that simply can not afford to pay $9 for 200 digital pages can maybe also enjoy a form of entertainment.
Either increase the buying quantity through promoting or cutting cost to a suitable figure. The point is and always has been to support licensing but in the context that allow people to have the chance to get a piece of the entertainment. I understand that not everyone can ever afford any kind of price but $9 per 200 pages is simply ridiculous . Simply ignoring the problem because you can afford to is not fair to the rest of the community.
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There is already a cheaper option. You don't want to pay $9 CAD per book? Pay for a subscription and you get 9 volumes for $6.59 CAD, which is $0.73 CAD per book.
Are you telling me that $0.73 CAD per book is too expensive?
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@mianli could be that I skimped a lil on everything you said but let‘s say my 2 cents.
Basically you are saying that it is too expensive here. But strangely you are overreacting the comments of others. Take for example that someone already told you that you need to pay around 5 Bucks for every book as Royalty. I don‘t claim that those are the real numbers but this should be close as Japanese publishers want to minimize the risk of reimporting books (seeing as Japanese would import those in English if they would be significantly cheaper). And Sam is under a NDA so he can never tell us the real numbers.
Then @Sam-Pinansky was so nice to tell you the costs of localization. Then you need to pay for servers, advertisement (the one for yourself), etc. so there would not stick much at the end for those who run this Business.
And now for you idea with advertisement on the site. I know that you can get money for a banner. But this amounts to around $2 per 10,000 views. And the ones with ad filters are not included in this. Let’s say to make serious money you would need many more site visitors. Oh and don‘t start with selling user data. First of all this is now in wide parts of the world illegall (I give you a hint GDPR, fines go up to 20 mil). Except if your members expressively say they are ok with this. So instead of making the necessary money you lose it as your members will decrease with this move.
And please don‘t compare a site like Mangafox with here. Yeah they can make money trough it but only because they have no real costs except the servers. This is like comparing apples with pears.
I get that you have idealistic thoughts and seriously consider how to improve something that everyone can benefit from it. But your thought process is too narrow and you don‘t even consider the opinions of others as significant. Atleast if I see all your replies to others.
But let me ask a question. Are you seriously saying that if it is too expensive here we should consider free translation sites? Every thought about that they are stealing content? I once gave a similar example here. Let‘s say you are an artist (music, pictures, etc) or a company that manufactures e.g. the new generation of replacement leg. Now someone comes and copy your picture, rips your music or copies the design of your leg. Yes they didn‘t make it themselves so it can be a lot cheaper (or get uploaded illegally). I for my part gladly pay for someone who gives the right holder money for their intellectual property. Although this is a discussion for another time but else we would get less new content.
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@mianli said in [Suggestion] Novel Pricing:
@the-green-death My point from that was that MagaFox was able to pay for its massive server and employees while also able to develop and sell merchandise through the use of ads. That is money. I want to say again that I am not suggesting this site be free and do all kind of illegal translating.
Isn't the problem there that they can hit critical mass on ads because they can draw in a lot of people due to the fact they aggregate manga from basically every scanlator group out there and offer it in one place? If they only hosted series that they had gone out licensed and translated themselves, you can bet they wouldn't have the traffic volume to hit that level of critical mass where ads would be a sizable revenue stream.
As someone who buys LNs in CAD, I don't really see JNC's price as being overwhelming. Considering that a print volume of something successful like SAO is $18.50 CAD a volume, I don't really see their converted price being that bad when you consider that even without the print and ship costs, there's still going to be some minimum floor price they have to achieve to stay profitable. With a membership, I'm getting access to 2 LNs a month that I can sample from all available translated chapters. I mean sure it's not great when the stuff up that particular month isn't my taste, but when they put up something I've been considering, it's a huge value to be able to read everything since after that I can keep following on the pre-pub releases and get the paid volumes once I have the credits if I think it's a worthwhile purchase.
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Some points I would like to make about publishing economics: This link is fairly instructive as this is Realist Hero 1 on Amazon.jp.
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I'd like to point out that the two major bookstores in Japan sell at B&N-style publisher rates without discount most of the time (remember pre-Amazon book buying?). This makes for a more expensive book experience, period.
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Because the market is a little more than a third of the prospective US market, anything sold at mass market within a smaller economy turns out to be more expensive as the scale needs to support an author to continue writing.
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(Specific as a US market matter): No other country uses agency pricing but the US. As a oversimplification, within the US, unless a contract specifically states otherwise, a vendor who purchases from a source may sell for ANY price that the vendor wants, the source has NO control over the pricing. Amazon actually got into major legal trouble (which they won) with publishers over selling books beneath the source price to Amazon (yes, you heard that right, Amazon was losing money on every sale of a book) because it had something to do with their business strategy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/technology/amazon-hachette-ebook-dispute.html
- For equivalent jobs, the Japanese are paid 80% of US rates, so their purchasing power parity is less (meaning everything costs quite a bit more).
This leads to a couple of points:
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The floor prices set are NOT just j-novel's prerogative: Let's say for the sake of argument that Sam wants to sell us Volume 1's at $3 in order to entice us to buy more volumes. However, he's having to work with source publishers in Japan that have strict agency models for pricing, and getting a price reduction approved requires source publisher consent. In this regard, that's not going to work as the publishers may consider volume sales to be detrimental to THEIR business model. Sam has some ability to set prices, but there is a clear floor for them. (And having to deal with Japan for academic publishing, I can't get the publishers there to have my translated textbooks sold for less even though I'm the author/editor for McGraw! I'm pretty sure that Bookwalker has the coins system as well to get around the floor pricing problem with agency pricing.)
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The Japanese pay more for a lesser product than we do: All those bonuses that we get, the Japanese have to buy multiple volumes for. Also for lesser purchase parity and higher prices as stated above, they get less for more.
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Somehow, there has to be a business somewhere: Look, fan translations are "free" to us consumers, but are not free to the content "creators" (and I do mean the translators, web hosting, and ancillary costs) in turns of time and attention. Not to knock on the fan translators, but who outside of the obsessed would want to tackle on some 30 volume monster like Rokujouma? Fandom can get you a couple of volumes, passion can get more, but it's only obsession (which I certainly suspect of the Rokujouma fan turned professional translator) or support that can get the large projects done, because money talks, and it has the best pickup lines.
What I expect from a publisher is transparent and fair pricing. Transparent in that prices are known information to the public, and fair in the sense that I can acquire for that price (this is not true in academic publishing where there are plenty of secret prices and discriminatory pricing models involved). J-novel fulfills the transparent and mostly fulfills the fair (because of the bonuses to Premium members that it's hard to communicate to buyers on other platforms).
As far as price increases, yes, I expect them, but in line with the general business. I do think prices should actually go to the Amazon standard $9.99 sooner than later due to inflation and consistency, but Sam runs the business as he pleases as the owner. I would also support licensing series where the source publisher demands higher prices for the books (Seven Seas) if those books sell here.
Now, look at the Amazon link for Realist Hero. That's the discounted version rather than the usual version in Kinokuniya. That's even a larger ask out of that population than us, but there's enough LN otaku to support that business. I'll do my part, and it's easier here.
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